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16 minutes ago, mtroads said:

I have no numbers to back this up, but it sure seems like TFC struggle more with penalties than everyone else.

They just don't look confident on penalties.   They strike the bar or sail the ball over the net.  Pk's last night unfolded exactly as it did against Seattle. 

I think that they never practiced this. Make sure you hit the net at least,  so that the keeper has to stop it. 

 

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Would have preferred to see Vasquez stay on and bring on Ricketts. Once Chapman and Hamilton were put on I figured Vanney was going for penalties. I was surprised that they had such a poor second half...they had almost no possession after dominating in the first. 

Man, Dalgado drives me nuts.

I wish Cheyrou didn't retire, I loved that guy and he would have been handy last night (if he can still run, that is.). 

On the plus side, they did win in Mexico and there's no shame in losing on the penalty lottery. It was great to see them play those Mexican teams especially live despite the miserable weather. I don't think the Mexican teams are that much better than MLS which is interesting...they're flattering themselves if they think their league is approaching the big European leagues. A big plus about our Canadian guys getting so much great experience.

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1 hour ago, rightback said:

Would have preferred to see Vasquez stay on and bring on Ricketts. Once Chapman and Hamilton were put on I figured Vanney was going for penalties. I was surprised that they had such a poor second half...they had almost no possession after dominating in the first.

They lost the midfield battle (or just by-passed it altogether) in that stretch after Hamilton came on because they took one less body out of midfield and put it up top, and Altidore and Hamilton (and Giovinco for that matter) didn't win many aerial battles or look co-ordinated as a trio (but then, when has that trio been on the field at the same time - I don't think ever). Then they started to win the battle again when Altidore went off and Aketxe came on to give them more numbers in midfield and TFC created 3 late chances to score, one of which should have been converted (we all know which one......). For me it wasn't really an issue of who came on but the formation played when they briefly went 4-3-3 before going back to 4-4-2.

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1 hour ago, mtroads said:

I don't think Vazquez is fit enough to go a full 90 minutes yet. If he was, I don't think that they would've taken him off.

Absolutely. There's no way they  would not have wanted Altidore and Vazquez to not be in a PK shoot-out, two of their three regular PK takers.

Ironically Bradley was the only repeat PK taker from 2016, more so due to injuries (but also some changed personnel like Johnson & Cheyrou)

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13 hours ago, Free kick said:

What still bugs the hell out of me is the BS draw that they were handed in this tounament.   They drew the toughest possible opponent at every stage including the round of 16.  That took a toll on everyone and probably contributed to all the injuries.  A fair draw might have meant that they could rested some top talent against those other central american clubs that get beaten up on by even TFC of the 2009-2012 era.  That also impacted the League results and .scheduale.  But they never got to face the panamanian and Honduran clubs.

Or the club from the Dominican Republic, which is who Chivas got to face in the first round, which allowed them to have the 2nd leg at home.

What's remarkable is not only TFC having the toughest possible draw that it was to have in this tourney, but having the 2nd leg in Mexico each of the past three rounds and still only losing on PK's with most of their regular PK takers unable to participate in the shootoutand 4 CB's out of the line-up causing at least 4 players to play out of position. Julian Dunn might get an earlier opportunity at redemption for a 17 year old than we thought.

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1 hour ago, Gian-Luca said:

Or the club from the Dominican Republic, which is who Chivas got to face in the first round, which allowed them to have the 2nd leg at home.

What's remarkable is not only TFC having the toughest possible draw that it was to have in this tourney, but having the 2nd leg in Mexico each of the past three rounds and still only losing on PK's with most of their regular PK takers unable to participate in the shootoutand 4 CB's out of the line-up causing at least 4 players to play out of position. Julian Dunn might get an earlier opportunity at redemption for a 17 year old than we thought.

Totally agree. And TFC comes into the tournament BEFORE MLS season has even begun, while Liga MX teams are on mid-season form. Damned proud of what they achieved. Next goal: win the league and try again next year  

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Some additional thoughts from the 2nd leg, now that I've watched the whole thing:

- between Giovinco's injury (which could have been a red card for the Chivas player), the Chivas player who blew his hamstring and Altidore's injury, I counted 5 minutes of injury time. Add another minute for the other subs which occurred, and there should have been about 6 minutes of injury time. The Ref only played 2. Obviously anything could have happened with the missing 4 minutes, I'm just mystified how he only played 2 minutes. It's like there was a curfew at the stadium the ref had to make sure was met

- Someone noticed Aketxe standing apart from his teammates in the PK shoot-out - I also noticed on the re-watch that he was the only sub not to leap off the bench in celebration on one of the earlier goals (I believe Giovinco's goal). Not sure what's going on there. Has to be said that he made a great tackle which led to what should have been the cup winning goal.

- Its the first time in a long time that I can remember an important TFC game ending with more Canadians on the field than Americans (by my count it was 4 Canucks, 3 Americans, 1 Italian, 1 Dutchman, 1 Brazilian and 1 Spaniard. One of the reasons why this is significant has been watching all of the post or pre-game clips on youtube of commentators talking on ESPN & other places in the US or Mexico who are keep referring to TFC as though it is a US club representing the US. You'd still think that some of them are unaware that Canadians exist and what's more unfortunate is that most of the offending comments were coming from Mexicans, Brits like Steve Nicol or a Venezuelan like Alejandro Moreno - mind you the latter also said after leg 1 that to him TFC looked like they didn't belong in the tourney, so it shows you what he knows. So we can't even blame this on "dumb Americans" (as some Canadians are wont to do) because most of the US commentators seem far more cognizant of where this team was coming, the nationalities of who was on it and what country they were representing.

- on that note, of TFC's goals in the CCL, 5 came from Canadians, 4 came from Italians, 3 from Americans and 1 own-goal. One of the nice and distinguishing features from a Canadian perspective of this run from to the CCL final vs. Montreal was how much more integral Canadians were to the run vs Montreal's in 2015. I seem to recall many games games in Montreal's run had either no Canadians  featuring at all or some where only Bernier was coming off the bench late, which meant that I didn't cheer for them as much as I would have wanted to.

 

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A mistake to play so many weak players in the last two league games as it was simply accepting to lose before it started. They had already started the league 1-2, now not only lost the final but down to 1-4 and climbing back is not that easy with the weaknesses seen early on

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Not going to be an issue.  Totally agree with how they played it.  We have 30 plus games to come back and get back into the playoffs and potentially compete for the Shield.  Winning the Concacaf champions league would have been massive for the club. We gave it our all and came up just short.  Great experience for the next one we go and win and by then MLS will have figured out the scheduling to ensure we don't need to do what we did in this tournament.

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On 4/27/2018 at 3:55 PM, Big_M said:

A mistake to play so many weak players in the last two league games as it was simply accepting to lose before it started. They had already started the league 1-2, now not only lost the final but down to 1-4 and climbing back is not that easy with the weaknesses seen early on

Given the MLS season is long, late reinforcements always come in the summer, the salary cap, limited player depth and this year, the World Cup departures, there will be even more teams going hot and cold.

This isn't the Premier League, la Liga or Ligue 1, there are no super teams and TFC is the closest to have any claim on it anyway. Instead, there are a bunch of average teams that rarely play consistently beyond 10 matches.

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Today reminded me of the bad old days.  Things look good, then a couple of funny calls, couple of bad breaks and somehow cruising at 2-0 ends up 2-2 in the dying seconds.  And I though VAR was supposed to fix some of the bad calls.  Cant wait to see any of the CB's get healthy toot suite!  

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Vanney should have brought on fresh legs sooner - after playing Chicago off the park early on the team faded badly in the 2nd half, which was completely predictable after the midweek game and flight back from Mexico two days ago. Nice to see Fraser come off the bench to save a goal, a shame that it only got them one point in the end.

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1 hour ago, Bison44 said:

Today reminded me of the bad old days.  Things look good, then a couple of funny calls, couple of bad breaks and somehow cruising at 2-0 ends up 2-2 in the dying seconds.  And I though VAR was supposed to fix some of the bad calls.  Cant wait to see any of the CB's get healthy toot suite!  

Of late we've been conceding lots of early goals. But today we reverted to way back when we just couldn't stop the other guys from socring after the 80th minute.

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2 hours ago, jpg75 said:

Forget VAR, the team played the 2nd half as if the 3 points were already in the bag and it cost them.

Don't think it was complacency -  it was quite obvious at the stadium that the likes of Delgado, Morgan, Osorio and Giovinco were completely spent in the second half. Vanney should have gone to his bench earlier, although Hernandez was quite poor and didn't have fatigue as an excuse

 

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I think the keeper just got to it before him.  I was really hoping he was going to round him and put that game to bed though.  But thats Ricketts, when u think he should score he prob wont, but he'll bang in a rebound or get on the end of a crazy cross out of nowhere.

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2 hours ago, Bison44 said:

I think the keeper just got to it before him.  I was really hoping he was going to round him and put that game to bed though.  But thats Ricketts, when u think he should score he prob wont, but he'll bang in a rebound or get on the end of a crazy cross out of nowhere.

The keeper should never have gotten to it before him.  And that lost opportunity to make it 3-1 came back to bite them.

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22 hours ago, BearcatSA said:

The keeper should never have gotten to it before him.  And that lost opportunity to make it 3-1 came back to bite them.

I couldn't hear what they were saying of course but prior to TFC kicking off after the 2-2 goal it looked to me like Giovinco was asking Ricketts the same question that you asked. I forgot to record the game so I didn't have a chance to re-watch but it was a strange play in that it looked like he was the favourite but then he seemed to get indecisive for some reason and was beaten to it.  Maybe the poor quality turf had a hand in it (I suspect it looked far better on tv than it did in real life - probably the worst I've seen it for overall field condition, as opposed to bad in certain spots like against Tigres). Or maybe he's trying hard to ensure that Hamilton overtakes him sooner than we expected for 3rd choice striker?

Speaking of strikers, Altidore is apparently only expected to be out a couple of weeks, apparently. Mavinga & Morrow supposedly back sooner than that, Zavaleta probably back after next Friday's game (which, after seeing the flopping performance by Hernandez, is something I am surprisingly genuinely relived by) but Moor apparently is gone for 2-3 months. I think Hagglund might be back before then as he was originally said to be out 6 weeks and that was three weeks ago.

https://www.sportsnet.ca/soccer/toronto-fc-tfc-mls-major-league-soccer-drew-moor-jozy-altidore-injuries-concacaf-champions-league/

 

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On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 12:54 PM, Gian-Luca said:

I couldn't hear what they were saying of course but prior to TFC kicking off after the 2-2 goal it looked to me like Giovinco was asking Ricketts the same question that you asked. I forgot to record the game so I didn't have a chance to re-watch but it was a strange play in that it looked like he was the favourite but then he seemed to get indecisive for some reason and was beaten to it.  Maybe the poor quality turf had a hand in it (I suspect it looked far better on tv than it did in real life - probably the worst I've seen it for overall field condition, as opposed to bad in certain spots like against Tigres). Or maybe he's trying hard to ensure that Hamilton overtakes him sooner than we expected for 3rd choice striker?

I think he had too much time to think about it and in doing so de-celerated while the keeper was decisive.  Regardless of the field, it still was a poor play.

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Solid game tonight. And a well earned victory.  Unlike last week with little turnaround time the boys were full value for 90 tonight and they gave Philadelphia no chance.  This will be the start of our MLS run and the climb to the playoffs and maybe even the Shield!!

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Jay Chapman scores TFC's third goal late, assisted by Jordan Hamilton. TFC finish with 4 CDN's on the field (Osorio and Morgan went 90, Chapman and Hamilton were subs). LOL i wonder if TFC are leading in CDN player minutes at this point?

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4 minutes ago, jpg75 said:

Jay Chapman scores TFC's third goal late, assisted by Jordan Hamilton. TFC finish with 4 CDN's on the field (Osorio and Morgan went 90, Chapman and Hamilton were subs). LOL i wonder if TFC are leading in CDN player minutes at this point?

In total minutes probably. In percentage, it's really tight between the three MLS sides. 

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